1. Technical Field
Illustrative embodiments generally relate to an image processing device capable of simultaneously reading image data on front and back sides of document pages, an image processing method employed in the image processing device, and an image forming apparatus including the image processing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In related-art image forming apparatuses, a document page may be reversed by an automatic document feeder when image data on both front and back sides of the document page are read using a single reading unit. Alternatively, two reading units, one each for reading the image data on the front and back sides of the document page, respectively, may be provided in the automatic document feeder, so that the image data on the front and back sides of the document page are simultaneously read by the respective reading units without reversing the document page.
In terms of faster processing speed and lower energy consumption, more advantages can be obtained by simultaneously reading the image data on the front and back sides of the document page than by reversing the document page to read the image data on both sides of the document page.
In the image forming apparatuses that simultaneously read image data on the front and back sides of the document page, for example, image data respectively read by first and second reading units are temporarily stored in a memory, and processed by a single image processing unit.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a related-art image forming apparatus capable of simultaneously reading image data on both front and back sides of document pages. Referring to FIG. 1, the image forming apparatus includes a contact image sensor (CIS) 1100 serving as a first color image reading unit and a charge coupled device (CCD) 1110 serving as a second color image reading unit, so that image data on both front and back sides of a document page can be read simultaneously without reversing the document page. An engine CPU 1120 to control each component in the image forming apparatus is also included in the image forming apparatus.
The image forming apparatus further includes shading correction units 1101 and 1111 that perform shading correction on the image data read by the CIS 1100 and the CCD 1110, respectively. Thereafter, the image data read by the CCD 1110 (hereinafter referred to as-first image data) is processed by an image processing unit 1500 first. While image processing is performed on the first image data by the image processing unit 1500, the image data read by the CIS 1100 (hereinafter referred to as second image data) is temporarily stored in a local memory 1400. Thereafter, when image processing performed on the first image data by the image processing unit 1500 is completed, the second image data is processed by the image processing unit 1500. After completion of image processing, the first and second image data are stored in a memory 1202.
In a case in which the image data read by the CIS 1100 and the CCD 1110 are monochrome image data, image processing is simultaneously performed on both of the image data by additionally using an image processing unit for full-color image data, not shown. However, in a case in which one of the image data read by the CIS 1100 and the CCD 1110 is full-color image data, image processing is sequentially performed on the image data on each of the front and back sides of the document page as illustrated in FIG. 2. Consequently, an image processing parameter is required to be set to the image processing unit 1500 each time the image data on either the front or back side of the document page is processed, increasing processing load on software during a page interval.
Further, because image processing is performed on the back side of the document page during the page interval as illustrated in FIG. 2, faster processing speed is required to reduce the page, interval and thus increase productivity.